But tales of towering US personalities and companies were outnumbered among the 262 entries by books warning of threats to the world’s biggest economy. In this vein, the longlist includes Luigi Zingales’s warnings about US cronyism (A Capitalism for the People), and Michael Sandel’s dissection of a world where everything is for sale (What Money Can’t Buy). Philip Coggan’s Paper Promises and Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, each take different long views of the flaws in global fin­ance and the roots of power and prosperity. Guy Lawson’s Octopus focuses on the Bayou hedge fund fraud, a signature scandal of the past decade, while Charles Duhigg (The Pow­er of Habit) and John Coates (The Hour Between Dog and Wolf) explore the scientific secrets of success and failure in financial markets and beyond.

In search of hope, some of the authors turn to fast-growing markets. Tom Doctoroff’s What Chinese Want ad­dresses the question of how to woo the country’s consumers, while Christopher Meyer and Julie Kirby (Standing on the Sun) find innovative examples of the new capitalism from India to Brazil. Ruchir Sharma (Breakout Nations) suggests the world should look beyond the big Bric countries for growth. And in Abundance, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler forecast greater gains from scientific and technological breakthroughs in the coming two decades than in the past two centuries.

Do not count on the next phase of global development being forged by in­dividuals, however. According to Barbara Kellerman’s The End of Leadership, the idea of the all-important leader is “passé”. That is the sort of humbling maxim that should be pinned up behind the desks of presidents, and presidential candidates, wherever they are.

Title

Author

Publisher

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Free Press

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company

Bryce G. Hoffman

Crown Business

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

Ruchir Sharma

US: W. W. Norton & Company, UK: Allen Lane

A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity

Luigi Zingales

Basic Books

The End of Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Harper Business

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk-taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust

John Coates

US: The Penguin Press, UK: Fourth Estate

Makers: The New Industrial Revolution*

Chris Anderson

Crown Business

Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market and Wall Street’s Wildest Con [published in the UK as Octopus: The Secret Market and the World’s Wildest Con]

Guy Lawson

US: Crown Business, UK: Oneworld

Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the New World Order

Philip Coggan

US: PublicAffairs, UK: Allen Lane

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business [published in the UK as The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, And How To Change]

Charles Duhigg

US: Cornerstone, UK: William Heinemann

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Steve Coll

US: The Penguin Press, UK: Allen Lane

Standing on the Sun: How the Explosion of Capitalism Abroad Will Change Business Everywhere

Christopher Meyer and Julia Kirby

Harvard Business Review Press

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

Walter Isaacson

US: Simon & Schuster; UK: Little, Brown

Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence

William L. Silber

Bloomsbury Press

What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and China’s Modern Consumer

Tom Doctoroff

Palgrave Macmillan

UK cover

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits Of Markets

Michael J. Sandel

US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, UK: Allen Lane

UK cover

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

US: Crown Business, UK: Profile Books

* Makers was added to the longlist after the original August 8 selection